Scope of The Macintosh Biblioblog

The primary scope of this blog has to do with addressing issues, covering new developments, explaining technologies, providing howto helps for biblical scholars who use a Macintosh computer to do their work. I intend it in some ways to provide a heads up to bible scholars regarding what they may not yet know about new ways to use their computer, or new tools available for it. Much of the subject matter is of interest to clergy who also use a Mac but are not in the academy but serving in other ministry locations such as the parish, and perhaps even to bible scholars who do not use a Mac. And while I am indeed a Macintosh enthusiast, I have NO interest in Mac evangelism in general, nor any Mac vs. Windoze debate, though who doesn't like a little Micro$oft bashing from time to time. They ask for it. As I anticipate it, major subjects that I will in time address include:

• Greek and Hebrew language use on OS X
• Rather spurious comment on topics in NT and especially Synoptic Studies
• Understanding and using a Unicode Greek keyboard layout
• Understanding Unicode for your work
• How to convert you current work for use with Unicode fonts
• Automating a scholars repetitive work, mostly via Applescript
• Tips for use with applications bible scholars use: Accordance, Word, Excel, Endnote, even Mail.app, etc.
• Applications and resources of my own creation
• The possibility of making use of the Unix underpinning of OS X
• Web browser compatibility issues
• Electronic text resources

I will feel quite free to post subject matter on issues in critical biblical scholarship that have nothing to do with using a Macintosh, and there may be a little bit of blogging about Macintosh issues that have little impact for most biblical scholars. But, I feel quite certain that I will make little effort to avoid the occassional post that seems entirely off topic, related to other interests I have. As I peruse blogdom, it is amusing to find the random combination of interests that a blog does make--a reflection of the blogger's interests, of course. Perhaps then I should give a warning of some of my other interests & activities:

• I pastor a church in Dallas
• Stay-at-Home Dad 3 days a week
• Ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Clergy couple with my wife
• Wariness/weariness of the political activity of the religious right in the U.S.
• Coding: Applescript, VBA, XML, Perl
• Sports: Lap swimming, Racquetball, Texas football and basketball
• Tolkien (my children are named Arwen and Sam, after all)
• well, surely that's enough warning